Okay, this was pretty good.  Not a whole lot of interest to write about for the last day of the con, which isn’t to say that it wasn’t a day filled with action, adventure, and incredibly bad, hastily whipped up renditions of Heath Ledger as the Joker, but only one thing truly stood out enough to convey without having to mask it in layers of fabrication.

Middle of the con-day, I’m taking a break, and furious over someone having stolen my chair in the tiny enclosure where tiny breaks are taken.  Joe, and Bryon, two of SLG’s most terrible creatures working the booth, J.R. Goldberg and myself are all eating our respective lunches in this small room, surrounded by boxes and curtains, so we’re pretty much sequestered away from anyone on the outside.  We’re chewing and talking in that way that we do, and I start catching little snippets of very impassioned conversation from outside, near one of the booth’s sales tables.  I look through a small slit in the curtain and see Matt, another of the highly trained, deadly booth workers sitting, looking at someone that is mostly obscured by the curtain.  This guy Matt’s listening to is going on about some awful encounter he had with what sounds like a grade-A douchebag.  To the guy’s right, Dan, another booth guy, is also looking on and taking in this guy’s tale of woe, which I soon realize is about yours truly – HORRIBLE LITTLE ME.  

I get the lunchees’ attention and tell them that I am actually witnessing the birth of one of those rumors that ends up staining the internet, a thing I have seen the final results of, but never before spotted to freshly in the wild.  It is a fascinating and scary thing, hilarious and sad all at the same time.

Later on, Matt and Dan tell me that the guy had walked up asking if Roman Dirge was around.  Having told the guy no, they then told him that I was currently signing, to which the guy curled up his face and said no thanks, leading into his tale of terror.

Here is that guy’s tale:

This wounded ass was walking through the crowded hall and spotted me heading in the opposite direction, actually bumping into my shoulder, thanks, no doubt, to how absolutely packed the place gets.  I then turned around to say “Watch where you’re fucking going, asshole!”, flipping him off in the process.  Lots of indignant remarks followed the telling of this encounter, and a lot of postulating on what could make a guy like me act in such a way.

Thing is, none of this ever happened.  Peeking out from the curtain, I had never seen the guy before in my life, and though bumps and shoves do happen in such an enclosed space, nobody every knocked me around that much, and I sure as hell never said anything but excuse me when it happened.

But to this guy, it either really happened, or this was some way of leaving a mark by trying to tell stories about someone he’s never met.

From day one of doing comics or animation, you wonder what it is in people that makes them speak about people they just don’t at all know in a way that makes it sound like they had some connection, even in a negative way, with that person, and I wonder how many other people this guy told the story to.

It doesn’t beat the story about the time I was kicked out of a nighclub for doing coke in the bathroom, because I’m such a fuckin’ hackneyed rockstar, but this time I actually got to marvel at it in action.

It was like turning your head at just the right time to catch a glimpse of that shooting star, only it’s clutching a giant sack of shwag and hoping you remember it.